Western countries continue to express frustration at the reluctance of African states to present a united front against Robert Mugabe's undemocratic re-election as president of Zimbabwe.

At the heart of this disappointment is a failure to appreciate that, in spite of Africa's elegantly worded declarations about espousing human rights and democracy, these ideals continue to be trumped by the principle of sovereignty.

Modern African and European conceptions of sovereignty are influenced by different historical experiences. The determining historical experience of the former is external conquest, domination and exploitation at the hands of colonial forces. The formative experience of the latter is the second world war, in which untold destruction, along with the Holocaust, instigated grave shock and revulsion in the European psyche.

For Europe, one of the lessons of the second world war and the Holocaust was that if states are left to their own devices, and a blind eye turned to their domestic activities in the name of respecting sovereignty, they may perpetrate terrible human rights abuses.

The European Union's adoption of the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in 1950 had its genesis in a strong European consensus that human rights violations such as the Holocaust were never to be repeated on European soil. EU member states are today bound by strict codes of conduct demanding respect for the rule of law, non-discrimination, prohibition of torture and slavery, freedom of religion and expression, and the staging of regular free and fair elections. The EU's elaborate and robust human rights regime has weakened the sovereignty of member states considerably.

For Africa, a lesson of the colonial experience is that if states do not safeguard their sovereignty, they risk falling prey to external forces of domination and exploitation. Indeed, had the modern-day international system of states been as hostile as that of the 18th century, when conquest and aggressive domination of weaker states was the norm, most African states would, most likely, be under external control. In Africa, sovereignty is an "inversion of colonialism" and an important prerogative when it comes to resisting claims and encroachments coming from outside national boundaries - the right to say no. It is an invaluable means of self-defence against external intrusion, which is viewed with deep suspicion given Africa's legacy of colonial conquest and exploitation.

Independent African states have consistently sought to maintain and strengthen their sovereignty. This practice was first conveyed explicitly in the 1963 charter of the organisation of African unity (pdf) (OAU), which sought to preserve and reinforce the sovereignty of African states in two ways:

First, the OAU Charter made it clear that the violation or changing of Africa's ex-colonial national boundaries was strictly prohibited.

Second, it barred all African states from attempting to carry out political assassinations or any other subversive activities in another African state.

The African Union (AU) replaced the OAU as Africa's supreme continental body in 2002. The AU largely reaffirmed its predecessor's commitment to upholding sovereignty in Africa. Article 4 of the constitutive act of the AU states that the AU shall function in accordance with the following principles: respect of borders existing on achievement of independence; prohibition of the use of force or threat to use force among member states of the Union; and non-interference by any member state in the internal affairs of another. Sovereignty remains a powerful motivating factor in Africa and no amount of screaming from across the Mediterranean Sea will alter this state of affairs in the short term. It will be some time yet before Africa evolves an internally driven robust human rights regime, effectively weakening sovereignty between states.

In addition to history, a key impediment to this evolution is western double standards. America ignores Uzbekistan's poor human rights record and Russia's atrocities in Chechnya because they are allies in its "war on terror", but imposes targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe. Britain boycotts cricket tours of Zimbabwe because of its poor human rights record, but remains silent when its cricket team tours Pakistan, which is also a grave human rights violator. The EU condemns Mugabe's human rights abuses forthrightly, but is muted about America's human rights abuses in Guantánamo Bay.

It is also unhelpful that Zimbabwe has been singled out for condemnation while a blind eye is turned to other undemocratic states such as Angola, Nigeria, Gabon, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea and Uganda.

The west's failure to apply human rights standards evenly results in stauncher claims to sovereignty in Africa. The danger lies in the fact that some of these claims are pretexts for internal repression. The west can aid Africa's evolution from regarding sovereignty as sacrosanct by desisting from duplicitous international politics.